What is God's Purpose for My Life?

Discovering God’s Purpose for Your Life

Discovering God’s purpose for your life is one of life’s great mysteries, joys, and sorrows. While we all long for a deeper sense of meaning, the seeming randomness of life and frequent trials and suffering can leave us confused and despairing.

In my work as a Christian counsellor, I often ask my clients, “What is your purpose?” Most people struggle to formulate a response. After a few minutes, many come back with the Sunday school answer of, “My purpose is to love God and others.” This isn’t incorrect, but while they logically assent to this belief, it often doesn’t connect with their souls on an experiential level.

So if purpose is so important to living a happy and healthy life as Christians, what do we do to imbue more purpose into our everyday lives? While this is a deeply personal question that I don’t profess to answer in full here, I hope to expose some dead ends that lead us away from God’s purpose. If we can avoid these side trails and distractions, we’ll be much more likely to find the right course.

Dead End #1 – My Purpose Is My Career

The biggest trap I see young (and old) people falling into today is seeing their career as their purpose. While career discernment is an important part of a happy, healthy life, it is one of the least important things when it comes to your purpose from God’s perspective.

The belief that if you find the right career in which you can serve God buys into the lie of the world—that your primary identity in life is as a worker. In our capitalist society, the current of culture pulls us toward thinking of ourselves primarily as productivity machines rather than human beings.

This is why so many despair when they can no longer do anything productive that contributes to society. But from God’s perspective, while He rejoices in our good works for Him and others, our true value and meaning come from our primary identity as beloved sons and daughters of the King.

So if you are trying to discern the right career and feel lost and bewildered by all the options, don’t worry. God doesn’t care about what you do as much as He cares about having your heart. If you focus on loving God and seeking His Kingdom with all your heart, soul, and strength, not only will He provide for your material needs, but even doing the last job you’d want in the universe will feel like an afterthought compared to the all-surpassing greatness of knowing God.

Dead End #2 – My Purpose Is Finding a Spouse

Next to career, the most often worshipped idol in modern Western culture is the romantic relationship and sex. Most of us long to find a partner with whom we can share our lives, have children, and build a healthy and happy family.

There is nothing wrong with this God-given desire, and the vast majority of us will end up in the vocation of being husbands and wives. But as Christians, we are heirs to a tradition that not only honours singleness, but proclaims that it can allow us to devote ourselves even more fully to God, which is the ultimate purpose of our lives.

This is not to say that singles are more holy than the married, but that marriage and family life can easily become a distraction from our higher goal of serving our Creator.

If you are single and despairing of ever finding a mate, don’t worry. God actually wants to give you something better than you could ever have imagined—Himself. Through the crucible of suffering and longing for a spouse, God is inviting you into a deeper relationship with Himself.

When you embrace your singleness not as a burden, but as a cross Jesus has given you to become more like Him, you can experience a deeper joy than you could ever find in a flawed spouse—having devoted 100% of your life and time to the God who loves you more than any spouse ever could.

Dead End #3 – My Purpose Is to Seek Pleasure 

A close second to the god of marital bliss is the worship of pleasure. We live in an age of abundance, and many of us are drowning in our attempts to fulfill sensual desires through food, drink, porn, social media, clothing, vacations, cars, houses, and the more obvious addictions of drugs and alcohol.

I live in Vancouver Canada, where the opioid crisis has killed thousands, but the desire to flee from pain by pursuing pleasure isn't limited to those living on skid row. We all struggle with addictive behaviours in some shape or form, and most of us fear the loss of our creature comforts even when we know they're not good for us. 

Many have fallen for the prosperity gospel, which proclaims that if you love God and serve Him, He will make you healthy and wealthy. This belief flies in the face of everything we see in the Gospel.

The people who loved God the most in the Bible often suffered the most for Him. The apostles were Jesus’ inner circle, and all but one were killed for their faith. You might be thinking, “I don’t worship wealth—I just don’t want to be poor.” This is a common mindset, but because of rising living standards, our concept of poverty has been distorted.

If we don’t have certain things—like owning property or a car—we may think of ourselves as poor and unloved by God.

In reality, God never promised us more than our basic needs: food and drink. When we focus too much energy on wealth accumulation, we easily forget to love God and the poor, becoming fearful of being in want and hoarding whatever goods God has blessed us with.

When God takes away our comforts and luxuries, it’s not because He hates us—it’s because He wants to remind us that our true wealth is found in Him. That’s why the Beatitudes proclaim that the poor are blessed: they are open to receiving all God has to offer, while the rich often believe they are self-sufficient and are blinded by worldly comforts.

How Do We Fulfil Our True Purpose?

We have now identified three common pitfalls to pursuing genuine purpose as Christians. You might now ask where we go from here.

As you begin to identify the ways you have been pursuing a false sense of purpose, it can awaken you to how distracted you may have been. Once you spend more time pursuing God and others, these false purposes lose their grip on you.

This allows you to live with peace even when you don’t know the next step—whether that’s what job to take, who to marry (or whether to marry), or how much money to spend on consumer goods.

Most of the heroes of faith in the Bible were flying blind. All they had were God’s promises. He didn’t give them a roadmap or a detailed blueprint for their lives. He gave general direction, and the rest of the journey was meant to be lived in blind faith, wholly dependent on His guidance and provision day by day.

This is terrifying because it forces us to relinquish control and certainty. But it also gives us the freedom to live the life God actually wants for us—not one based on our own wills and desires.

Once we surrender our ideal life, career, spouse, and guilty pleasures to God, we finally reach a place where He can use us for His glory.

So the question, “What is God’s purpose for my life?” is really an invitation—to surrender all your heart’s desires to the One who made you. Even the desire to know your purpose requires relinquishing control and trusting God’s timing.

When you do, He will lead you on the path He has for you. And while you may not have all the answers, you will have a deep and abiding peace that comes from Him.